Speech at World Summit for Social Development

My colleague from India said the following in the London Guildhall one year ago. "No great industrialist is going to come and look after the primary health centers of my country. No multinational company is going to run our primary schools".

Norway had the same experience on its path to prosperity: One hundred years ago, we were among the poorest countries in Europe. Then as now, markets did little to promote equity and social justice.

Our Scandinavian models are shaped by generations of people who have made workable compromises between capital and labour within the framework of representative democracy. There is no other way to equity and social justice than empowering people, - men and women - allowing democracy to work, - harnessing market forces, - taxing surpluses - and redistributing the proceeds.

The equity gap cannot be bridged without effective public sectors and civil servants of outstanding integrity. However well the market forces allocate resources, they do not respond to common needs. Common needs for sustainable development; education, health and social security can only be articulated and met by people and their governments.

20 million people are out of work in Europe. In many of the countries we describe as rich, the middle-class and the lower-paid have never felt so poor. But their predicament is infinitely better than that of the hungry billion in the Third World, who have never heard of, - or felt, - any equity at all.

Poverty is still the gravest insult to human dignity. Poverty is the scar in humanity's face.

Our inability so far to hit down on poverty haunts our common political record. Our history of dealing with poverty is an epic of protracted stalemates, indifference, bureaucracy and empty rhetoric. People and countries of good will have made serious efforts, only to suffocate in the quagmire of inefficiency, institutional rivalry and inconsistent follow up.

Social development for all is a different challenge - if we are 20 instead of 10 billion people. Population growth threatens to disrupt beyond recovery the equilibrium between people, resources and the carrying capacity of the planet. The Cairo Conference gave us hope that we may be able to stabilize our numbers before it is too late.

In the past, we have adopted workprogrammes and plans of action, - even priority programmes which have been acted on with a conspicuous lack of dynamism. Now, - if we implement everything we sign onto here in Copenhagen, we would have done a very good job. If not, we have not.

The cost of poverty, in human suffering, in the wasteful use of human resources and in environmental degradation has been grossly neglected. Most countries have a social policy, an environmental policy and a redistributive system. Only a minority of countries are welfare states.

The international redistributive system, what we have today as seeds of an international public sector which we so sorely need, is in a shameful, neglected condition.

To blame is not only the lack of generosity of countries who like to assume the mantle of donorship. The recipient countries are responsible as well. Budgets for development aid have to carry democratic support, and that is also why the policies of recipient countries are so important, not only the effectiveness of their public sectors, but the social profile of their policies are highly relevant. The taxpayers of the North are skeptical about programmes that they do not see as worthwhile. It has always been that way, and this reality is not going to change.

The 20/20 concept is new at this Summit. It requires mutual commitment. It requires the solidarity of the international community and the responsibility of each national government to provide basic social services to its people. It is not possible to meet the aspirations of our people, nor to fulfill the commitments of this conference without allocating at least 20 per cent of national budgets to basic social services.

The destitute poor have for too long been kept at arms length by good wishes and the rest in promissory notes. As Martin Luther King said, the check has come back from the bank of justice marked "insufficient funds".

There are global bills which are truly common. Bills for peace, bills for environmental protection, bills for development which must be shared equitably. I refuse to believe that the world can go on much longer financing them by lotteries and public whims. We need reliable sources of finance, assessed contribution, even exotic new sources of finance. We are not poor in ideas but close to bankrupt in their implementations. That is why we would make a mistake if we simply dismiss new systems of international taxation, be they on international transactions or the use of global commons, such as the airspace.

There are no sanctuaries for the rich. We live in a global neighbourhood. Our solidarity must transcend borders and generations. We will be haunted down by an all-encompassing vicious circle if we continue to act as if the world can be based on segregation between the fortunate few and the powerless poor.

If we lay our ears to the ground, and listen to the oppressed millions,- we will hear a song of freedom. We hear the tide of people as they come marching to take what is rightfully theirs. Let us listen to that song.